SD 12 
.07 
Copy 1 

I 



,>••>■",, 



! 



ft# 



REPORT OF THE SECRETARY '898 



* 7 



mm M im if imw 



porestry and Rnd Land Ii^toests. 




LIBRARY OF GGNaRESS, 

DEC 1 i: 



SALEM, OBEOON: 

W. H. LEEDS, STATE PRINTER. 

1898. 



A. PAPER 



FOKESTRY INTERESTS 



HON JOHN MINTO 




SAIiEM, OREGON: 

W. H. LEEDS, STATE PRINTER. 
1898. 



c^l^ 






f, 



-^ f\ 

[ ¥ *"!' 

F0RE5TRT INTERE5T5. 

Mr. President and 3Iembers of the Board: — 

Since responding to your request in April last to write out my views on 
the subject of Forestry, I have, as you authorized, become a member of the 
American Forestry Association, and from its publications and others from 
the division of forestry of the United States department of agriculture, 
and from Hon. Binger Hermann, Conimisslouer of the General Land 
Office, I have secured valuable information on the present status of the 
national forest policy, in which the American Forestry Association seems 
to be an impelling and guiding influence. 

The American Forestry Association is a voluntary body. Its member- 
ship roll contains six hundred and ninety names, sixty-eight being females; 
and three hundred and seventy-one — a clean majority — are residents of 
New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and the District of 
Columbia, fifty claiming residence in Washington City. It is, I believe, 
reasonable to suppose that the large majority of the members of this body 
are educated people — idealists on the subject of forestry. It is not deemed 
unreasonable to assume that the fifty members located in Washington are 
(in addition to being well informed) either in the employ of the National 
Government, or wishing to be so. The organization is so constituted that a 
few active members can shape the course of the association and become a 
powerful influence in framing the policy of the government relative to the 
disposal of forest lands. Take B. E. Fernow's position as illustration : He 
is chairman of its executive committee — three being a quorum ; a member 
of its directors, four being a quorum. [And fifteen is a quorum of the as- 
sociation.] He is also chief of the division of forestry, which gives him a 
great personal influence. By the report of its executive committee, read by 
Mr. Fernow, February 5, 1897, we are informed that it secured the axtpo'mt- 
ment of a committee of the National Academy of Sciences ^'■by inducing the 
then Secretary of the Interior (Hon. Hoke Smith) to ask the advice of that 
learned body" as to the proper steps to be taken with reference to the pub- 
lic timber lands ; that an appropriation of |2o,000 was readily secured to 
pay its expenses ; that "«Y was not expected its recommendations would be 
essentially or strikingly different from those made and advocated by the 
association;" that it was hoped " the v^eight of the opinion of the eminent 
men of the committee, so secured, and the body from which the committee 
was selected — being the legally constituted advisor of the government in 
matters scientific— would do much to arouse more general public interest 



[4] 

and to secure the passage of desired legislation." In the same report the 
committee mentions that "it passed and directed to congress and the execu- 
tive, resolutions protesting against the modification of the Cascade range 
forest reserve, which modification the people of Oregon had petitioned for." 
The report of the executive committe of the American Forestry Asso- 
ciation was read at its meeting on February 5th. That of the committee 
whose appointment it secured from the Academy of Sciences, by the help 
of one or more competent clerks of the general land office detailed by Sec- 
retary Francis to assist in its preparation, had been " completed and sub- 
mitted about February 1st." It recommended thirteen additional forest 
reserves, of an aggregate area of 21,379,840 acres. The recommendation 
was adopted and proclaimed on February 22, 1897, without reference to the 
representatives of the states most directly interested or the conditions of their 
admission as political communities, in plain contravention of some impor- 
tant 2irovisions. The report is introduced by alluding to experiments now 
under process by Gustave Wex, an eminent engineer having charge of im- 
provements on the river Danube, giving gauges recorded as to the high and 
low water marks of ten rivers having their sources in central Europe. As 
the examinations are incomplete, they are inconclusive as to central Europe, 
and constitute simply an introduction to the report, which seems to avoid 
scientific demonstration, to deal in assumption of facts and aspersions of 
industries in Oregon which cannot be truthfully applied to the natural 
conditions existing in this state, nor to the actions of its citizens. 

Happily, the report shows such a lack of statesmanship that it caused 
a halt in the movement of the policy which thus seems to have been initi- 
ated by the Forestry Association, the general objects of which are certainly 
worthy and very important where timber is needed. The wording of the 
report of the committee to the Academy of Sciences is such, as to assertions 
made and language used, as to create the suspicion that the committee 
trusted too much to the clerk or clerks the secretary of the interior placed 
to their assistance. Assertions of fact are made and expressions used rela- 
tive to sheep and sheep husbandry that may be passed over as emanating 
from an appointee of an appointee of President Cleveland. It is not possi- 
ble to believe such assertions and expressions to be the composition of any 
member of a body selected from the American Academy of Sciences, and 
the letter of Professor Sargent, in appendix a of the report, is so superior 
as to make it almost certain the members "signed a report none of them 
would have written." The tenure of the report is so abusive of sheep and 
sheep owners as to create the conviction that it is the product of personal 
animosity, as it is but a refined echo of the western cowboy's abuse of sheep 
and sheep owners — his successful contestants for grass in the range coun- 
try. The effect of this part of the report will be to increase and encourage 
animosities which have caused the outrages against law and justice that 



[5] 

have been committed against flock owners and their flocks in every range 
state. It is not intended to claim that sheep men are not sometimes ag- 
gressers in these troubles : they are not angels. 

The use of the word "nomadic," as defining this mode of sheep-keep- 
ing, is calculated to give a false conception of the pursuit. The owners are 
not " nomads," nor are their flocks, indeed. The former have their settled 
homes in the dry pastoral regions of the range states — are themselves the 
equals of other men engaged in developing their localities, both in public 
spirit and private enterprise. This fact can be proved by looking at the de- 
velopment of a country much more closely resembling that claimed to have 
been examined by the committee than does that of central Europe — Aus- 
tralasia. But Australia, and the lessons to be derived from Australia's en- 
terprise, in the conservation of scant water supply, its records of rainfall, its 
experiences of the encroachment of "pine scrub" upon sheep and cattle 
ranges, the greater success of the former on driest ranges as compared with 
the latter, has received no notice from this intelligent committee. Why ? 
It would seem as though the work was already cut out for this respectable 
committee — as a stalking horse to the forestry association ; and it came 
very near telling by whom, when it follows John Muir and B. E. Fernow 
in holding up to the secretary of the interior, and through him to the presi- 
dent of the United States, the examples of the imperial governments of 
Germany, Russia and British rule in India in regard to forestry ; as though 
the citizenship of the United States were on the same level as the laboring 
populations of those countries, and there were no agreement between the 
states and the nation in the way of its recommendations. 

The committee recommends the use of the army to guard these reserves, 
now aggregating nearly forty million acres, needed, as it claims, for the 
preservation of the water supply in the dry interior ; and as a means of 
making money where the best timber is and water is not needed, as in the 
Olympic range in Washington. It recommends the exclusion of sheep 
from pasturage within these reservations, as destroyers of the forest and 
desolators of the plains. The herders are singled out as incendiaries of for- 
ests. The major reasons for its recommendations are that forests protect 
the sources of streams in mountain and highland districts, by preserving 
the snow from melting and impeding the percolation of melted snow or 
rain from reaching the valleys below. My observation teaches me that 
mountains and highlands are the attracting causes of precipitation, and 
trees and brushwood are effects of this precipitation ; that all other things 
being equal, snow melts first in belts of timber or brush, partly because the 
trees and brush break up the snow when falling and partly because of the 
influence of color on solar rays, dark objects absorbing, white, reflecting 
heat. The bulletin ( No. 38) of the experiment station of the University of 
Missouri is now sending out the result of color on peach trees, showing that 



the simple act of whitewashing this sensitive tree delayed the swelling of 
the buds twenty-two days later than the unwhitened. This accords with 
my observations on the Cascade range, where it is rare to find a patch of 
snow within the timber after the middle of July, and not then near the 
trees or brush. Later tban that snow is on open ground ; generally where 
it has been laid by di'ifting. These snow banks on open land, and water 
from springs in valleys below, are the sources of rivers after the middle of 

July- 
Congress, in passing the sundry civil expense bill, June 4, 1897, provided 
for the survey of the forest reserves, and empowered the president to revoke, 
modify or suspend all such executive orders or proclamations, or any part 
thereof, from time to time, as he shall deem best for the public interests; 
and suspended the proclamation of February 22, 1897, as to reserves in Wy- 
oming, Utah, Montana, Washington, Idaho and South Dakota, till March 1, 
1898. This action has had the result of causing the departments of the in- 
terior and of agriculture to send out special agents to collect information 
on the interests involved. Mr. F. V. Coville, botanist of the department 
of agriculture, visited this office with a letter of introduction from Hon. 
Binger Hermann, asking such aid as I could give him as a special agent of 
the department of agriculture, sent to Oregon with a view of studying and 
reporting upon the subject of sheep grazing within the forest reserves. I 
gave him all the aid I could and a general letter of introduction to such 
stockmen as he should meet on his proposed route northward from Klamath 
Falls on the summit and eastern slope of the Cascade range. 

In a letter from Washington, acknowledging my letter was a service to 
him, he expresses the belief that he had gathered facts which would solve 
the grazing question. 

A letter from Edwin F. Smith, statistical agent of the department of 
agriculture, asking the number of sheep and value of grazing on the Cas- 
cade range and foot-hills, was received by Hon. H. E. Dosch, of the first 
district, who turned it over to me for answer. Based on the number of 
sheep assessed in Wasco, Sherman, Crook, Lake and Klamath counties in 
1896, and estimating the number of lambs not assessed, I count the total 
707,667 head, the wool yield of which I estimate at 4,953,669 pounds, worth 
in the home market $495,366.90, all of which I credit to summer grazing, 
leaving the mutton and lambs to the credit of winter care ; but I think the 
benefit of the sheep being taken off the plains in summer is worth fully as 
much to other stock interests — horses and cattle — and to the wintering of 
sheep, so that the total value would be in round numbers $1,000,000 an- 
nually. Only one third of these sheep as yet go within the bounds of the 
reserves as laid, but the number is increasing as the flock-owners increase 
and improve their provisions for the winter keep. There is little or no 
lumber taken from the reservations. The provision for winter feed is the 



['J 

engrossing summer work of the east Oregon tiock-owner, and his success in 
that is the measure of his success in his pursuit. In this he has the advant- 
age of the range cattle owner, as he has his flocks always under control, 
which is well nigh impossible with cattle or horses. Cattle, horses and fat 
sheep are generally shipped to markets east of the Rockies by rail, but 
sheep designed for sale as breeders for the ranges of Wyoming or the 
Dakotas, or feeders for the corn lands of Nebraska, Kansas, or adjoining 
states, are driven on foot, preferably on the highest lands on the route taken 
— both food and water and avoidance of local interests being considered. 
The Forestry committee, alluding to these interests, says: 

" Great flocks are wintered in the sheltered canj'ons of Snake river, and 
then, spreading through eastern Oregon, have destroyed the herbage of the 
valleys and threatened the forests on its mountain ranges. Sheep raised in 
eastern Oregon and Washington are driven every summer across Idaho and 
Wyoming to markets in Nebraska and Dakota, eating bare as they go and 
cai-rying ruin in their path. In every western state and territory nomadic 
sheep men are dreaded and despised. Year after year, however, they con- 
tinue their depredations. The actual loss this industry inflicts on the coun- 
try annually, in thousands of acres of burnt timber and in ruined pasture 
lands, is undoubtedly large, although insignificant in comparison with its 
effects on the future of mountain forests, the flow of streams and the agri- 
cultural possibilities of their valleys." 

This extract contains the chief points of the committee's conclusions. 
This business of marketing sheep from west of the Rockies is in the hands 
of middle-men, who pay for any accommodations they receive from resi- 
dents of the country they cross. The picture of destruction is wholly 
imaginary, both as to the threatening of the forests and the ruin of pas- 
tures. I here insert an extract from a letter received from Commissioner 
Dosch, who has recently visited the Snake river canyons. He says: 

" As you know, I have just returned from a trip to Montana and inci- 
dentally paid a visit to friends in Utah, Idaho, and Oregon, along the 
Snake river, examining many commercial and private orchards, all under 
irrigation. I have come to the conclusion, notwithstanding the fearful 
heat, for it ranged from 108° to 111° in the shade to 133° in the sun in the 
orchards, agriculture and horticulture is much more satisfactory where one 
controls the water than to depend on the heavens for it, coming, as it does, 
at unseasonable times, which is not the case in irrigated districts. I have 
not seen finer kept orchards, nor more thrifty growing trees, nor laden 
with finer, larger peaches, pears, prunes and apples, than those very or- 
chards along Snake river, which were but a few years ago barren wastes 
covered with sage brush and jackrabbits. The grain fields are simply im- 
mense, and as to alfalfa for hay it is beyond belief — three to four cuttings 
per year, averaging seven tons for the year. If our southern Oregon friends 



[8^ 

would take lessons from these Snake river people, they would simply have 
a paradise." 

In a more recent letter Mr. Dosch tells me of one firm near Ontario 
who had 2,000 tons of alfalfa hay, who had just given an order for 2,000 
calves to be purchased in the Willamette valley at $8.25 per head. Any 
reasonable business man knows that this transmountain trade in cattle and 
sheep is one of advantage to breeder, middleman and feed-seller ; and 
so far as the sheep are concerned they are not "hoofed locusts" but the 
golden hoofed bearers of the golden fleece, eating a greater variety of the 
bitter weeds of the hot plain, and by their owners carrying gold to the 
owners of hay in the Snake river and other canyons, when their welfare 
demands such purchase. They do not eat coniferous trees at any stage of 
growth, and they lessen the danger of forest fires where they feed. This is 
the statement of unprejudiced men, from central California, to northern 
British Columbia on the Pacific coast. In the consular reports from Aus- 
tralia, which tell of sheep being destroyed in fires of dry grass and timber 
combined, there is not a single charge made against sheep keepers as incen- 
diaries. 

Among those who have been here this past summer to estimate the 
reasons for the people of Oregon desiring the reduction of the Cascade 
forest reserve, was Mr. B. E. Fernow, to whom allusions have been made. 
If his remarks relative to the Cascade reserve were correctly reported in the 
Oregonian of September 9th, it ought not to be hard to convince him the 
people of Oregon are right in their desire for its reduction. They, like the 
people of many other states, are very willing to have some of the most in- 
teresting mountains included in reserve parks. He ascended the bases of 
Mt. Hood and Mt. Jeflferson and made an estimate of the reserves as a 
timber resource. To reach the latter mountain he passed through a commu- 
nity of a larger number of citizens than constitutes the American Forestry 
Association, whose families are supported by lumbering interests inside the 
reservation. He is reporled as saying: "There is not much, although 
some, good marketable material on the Cascade and Bull Run reserves, but 
the larger part of the great reserve, I am inclined to think, comprises 
Alpine forest of hemlock and firs, which does not furnish material at pres- 
ent marketable, or else is burnt up. Although the reserved area appears 
large, its useful contents are but scanty. You may safely halve the area as 
far as serviceable timber is concerned." This is a remarkably good estimate 
of the eastern half of it, but Mr. F. was deceived as to the west half by 
seeing only the high ridges, whereon the timber is always thin and inferior 
from natural causes — foremost of which is lack of moisture at its roots; next, 
the injurious influence of the wind. 

Mr. F. proceeds: "I have not heard a single good reason against the 
reserve. The reasons usually can be sifted down to some small speculative 



[9] 

interest, that is supposedly sacrificed to the greater communal interest. 
The poor man who has taken up a homestead in the woods — not to make 
a home, but to speculate with the timber on the 160 acres — feels injured 
because his speculation may not pan out; the sheep herder feels injured be- 
cause he loses the free range to which he had hardly any right before, and 
which he did his best to destroy by his reckless manner of using it; a third 
class is formed by those who consider the reservation policy one imposed 
upon western communities by eastern cranks, ignorant of western condi- 
tions. These are to be pitied for their lack of perception that this is one 
country with one intei'est, knowing no east and no west." In this, Mr. 
Fernow charges bad faith and low motives to the "poor man;" selfish, 
reckless incendiarism against the sheep herder, and narrow, sectional jeal- 
ousy against those who oppose the reserve policy. This is "one country," 
but there are supposed to be about seventy millions of personal interests 
covered by its constitution. There are some forty community interests leg- 
ally formed, which should not be lightly infringed. The citizenship of the 
fourteen states and territories which have large amounts of public lands 
within their bounds, and of which they have heretofore been deemed the 
local guardians under the terms of their admission to the union, preserves 
a full average share of pride in the fact that this is a government "of the 
people, by the people, and for the people," which secures to the poorest cit- 
izen the ownership of himself, and may be said to invite him, by the home- 
stead law, to the ownership of a home. As one of these, the writer claims 
the right to be heard in regard to this reserve policy, as it bears upon the 
interests and seems to threaten the liberities of citizens of Oregon, for rea- 
sons believed to be erroneously based. 

With due respect for the members of the Foi'estry Association and the 
committee it secured to aid its objects, so far as these are to cultivate a 
public spirit to foster silvia culture where it is needed and to disseminate 
information to that end, I yet must (from more than fifty years acquaintance 
with conditions in Oregon, half of which has been such as to make me 
familiar with the natural phenomena of the Cascade mountains and the 
eflect of man's usage upon them ) dissent almost in toto from the assump- 
tions of the committee and the dei'ogatory charges made against sheep, 
their herders or their owners. I owe to the nation to stand for the truth 
on this subject in all its phases, general as to forests and conservation of 
water supply, and particular as to sheep husbandry and its influence upon 
the growth of conifers (the only forest trees of the Cascade range and in- 
terior mountains involved in this policy, except a little Cottonwood and 
aspen.) 

For two years prior to March 15, 1893, I was in the employ of the 
United States department of agriculture, to examine and report upon the 
conditions of sheep husbandry in the states of CaUfornia, Oregon and 



[10] 

Washingtou. The condetised report is publisiied in Ibe special report on 
the sheep industry of the United States, bureau of industry, 1892. Ten 
letters of California sheep growers are therein quoted, all protesting against 
the charges of setting out forest fires by sheep herders. They are samples 
of scores of letters of the same tenure, from which I gathered that, unless 
fires were started designedly by the basque herdsmen ( who were really 
nomadic in their methods and had largely superseded the Americans in 
southern California) the charge was untrue against the sheep industry in 
that state. It never had a particle of truth in it as to the state of Oregon, 
so far as I know, nor in Washington. In British Columbia, the most re- 
cent government reports contain thirty-seven answers, giving causes of 
forest fires. Not one mentions the sheep industry as being the cause, yet 
there, as in western Washington and Oregon, the clearing of thinly set 
timber lands for homes, in which sheep can be utilized to some extent, is 
increasing as population increases. 

Mr. Fernow is quoted as saying that the smoke he found an annoyance 
in Oregon will deter tourists from visiting this state. Well, Oregon as a 
a community has not yet come down to the show business. The smoke is 
not the evidence of forest fires by incendiaries. It is in the main evidence 
of burnt offerings to nature's God by the home builders of western Oregon 
and Washington, who believe that: 

" To make a happy fireside clime 

For weans and wife. 
Is the true pathos, and sublime, 

Of human life." 

Sometimes fires get beyond the control of homebuilders, though not 
often. Carelessness of summer vacationists, hunters, berry-pickers, travel- 
ers through unsettled mountain timber districts, and road makers, is the 
most common cause of forest fires. The Hon. D. P. Thompson, who has 
had great experience in the timber lands of Oregon as a surveyor, believes 
he has knowledge of two instances where fires occurred spontaneously, 
probably by the rays of sunlight shining through clear turpentine exuda- 
tions. This may account for some fires on the east slopes of the Cascade 
range where the yellow pine exudes turpentine very freely. But it must 
not be forgotton that the Warm Springs Indian reserve is bounded on the 
west by the summit, and the Indians have the rights of hunting and graz- 
ing their ponies on the entire range, to which many of them resort every 
season, when (by custom from which they see no reason to desist) they re- 
new the old berry patches and coarse grasses of the dry lake beds by fires. 

I would estimate seventy-five per cent, of the smoke obscuring the 
views of the September visitor in Oregon or Washington as the result of 
land-clearing for homes. The employment by the state of five or six active 
young men from the first of July to the last of October of each year would 



tllj 

soon stop four fifths of the fires resulting from carelessness west of the sum- 
mit of the Cascade range. They are very rare now on the east side, and 
though ten years ago they were more frequent, they never were destructive 
of valuable timber, because the grasses, even when dried into hay, were 
always light within the timber belts. Pasturage of stock is a protection 
there, as fifty year's experience has proved that summer grazing prevents 
dry grass fires in western Oregon and Washington. If it were desirable to 
conserve the forest growth it could be done by selling the land, or leasing 
it, on defined conditions, as is done in the Australian colonies, where men 
of weight and influence are not in the habit of making war upon the most 
important industry possible in a country closely resembling these range 
states; wherein there are yet (although grants, reservations and private 
ownerships cover nearly all the water courses ) exclusive of Texas, 534,000,- 
000 acres of public lands, of which Oregon has 35,892,318 acres. Give the 
people of those dry plains the wise and liberal inducements and security in 
their investments which have been made for sheep, cattle or horse breeding 
in Australia ; and in addition to sheep husbandry already established, 400,- 
000,000 acres of those dry pasture lands will become a field of ])roduction 
which will feed the looms of the nation, without the necessity of importing 
a pound of wool, and in addition will supply lamb and mutton to the peo- 
ple. 

Senator Warren, of Wyoming, in a paper in The Illustrated American, 
estimates the numbers of livestock now feeding in the arid land states, and 
ranging chiefly on the public lands, as follows: Cattle, 14,000,000; sheep, 
24,000,000; horses, 2,000,000; mules, 50,000. Under our existing land sys- 
tem, the contest for range privileges to which no man has an exclusive 
right leads to rivalry and strife which not infrequently culminate in law- 
lessness and bloodshed. Give leases to applicants on nominal terms, or sell, 
under conditions, at very low rates, securing to those making permanent 
improvements in either case the appraised value of such improvements, 
whether on the plains, parched and dry, or on the grassy highlands, which 
are a^haven of comfort for man and beast in the summer months. From all 
the range country at elevations producing the pine trees, timber and water 
will be carried to and conserved on the plains, and timber preserved on the 
mountains by local energies, guided and impelled by personal and local in- 
terests. Double the number of cattle, sheep and horses will be kept, and bet- 
ter kept than now ; and lands now deemed not worth the purchase will fur- 
nish homes for thousands and tens of thousands of happy people — lands on 
which yet the wood growth is sage brush and the permanent live stock, 
jack-rabbits. The lease and conditional sale system in use in Australasia 
induced the change from loose herding to the Paddock system of keeping 
stock, and one third more stock is better kept, and at less cost, it is claimed, 
on the same area of land than under the former method. What Aus- 
tralians can do, Americans can do. 



[12J 

In the national report on sheep, to which I have refen-ed, will be found 
a letter of J. Parker Whitney, another kind of Boston man, who sent his 
brother to Australia in 1855 and bought 350 such sheep, at |50.00 per head. 
He succeeded in getting 120 of them to California, which he subsequently 
estimated as paying him 11,000,000. They induced him to buy 20,000 acres 
of the then cheap land in Placer county, California, which he was selling 
in small parcels in 1892 at $150 to $300 per acre, for peach orchards. This 
was near Koeklin, from which district he was the first man to send a train 
load of peaches east of the Rockies, and where I saw the Central Pacific 
railroad company, and private parties clearing lands of the pine and other 
scrub which had grown up on closely grazed lands within the past twenty- 
five years, just as it has done in Western Oregon. 

The estimated area of forest land in Oregon has been considered at 
about 16,000,000 acres in the entire state. Dr. J. R. Cardwell, commissioner 
at large of the State Board of Horticulture, considering the economical 
values of the coniferous growth of commercial value, estimated it at 16,000 
square miles, or 10,000,000 acres, in 1893. This estimate Mr. A. W. Ham- 
mond, of Wimer, Oregon, vice-president of the American Forestry Asso- 
ciation, adopted in his report to that body in 1896. He puts "the merchant- 
able timber on the latter area at 400,000,000,000 feet, board measure." He 
says : "The annual out-put is now estimated at about 200,000,000 feet ; but 
even this amount must be insignificant in comparison with the amount an- 
nually decaying and in a sense going to waste in the forests through natural 
causes. In many places, even about the settlements, one will see numbers 
of the very largest and handsomest pine trees — in every respect magnifi- 
cent specimens— 200 to 250 years old and more, dead and dying, that must 
go to waste because of the entire absence of means of converting them into 
lumber. 

"The annual output, in fact, represents an amount equal to about 10 per 
cent, only of the annual growth. Whence it follows ( if the forest remains 
stationary ) that an amount equal to 90 per cent, of this new growth is an- 
nually going to waste. This means, in other words, that if the mature 
timber could be culled annually from the forests of this state, they could 
be made to yield annually about 2,000,000,000 feet, board measurement, 
without detriment." 

I quote a little farther from Mr. Hammond to show how impractical 
a good man can be. He says: "In the opinion of the writer, what is 
most needed here just now is, first, some efficient regulation in regard to 
forest fires; second, proper measures to prevent the gobbling up of large 
tracts of the most valuable portions of forests by private corporations where 
lumbering operations are liable to be carried on without reference to future 
needs or to future conditions of the country. The general sentiment here 
is yet far from being sufficiently alive on this important subject. So many 



[13] 

interests would like to share in the general prosperity that would follow 
the working on any adequate scale of the great forests of this state, that 
public sentiment, it is only too well feared, would be in sympathy with any 
movement of that kind, and the future needs or the future condition of the 
country would receive no attention except at the hands of a few." 

How restful the mental condition of a man must be who can contem- 
plate 1,800,000,000 feet of lumber wasting annuallj' for lack of users, yet let 
the waste (which is one hundred fold more than annual destruction by for- 
est fires) go on for fear of over-cutting in a country like this. The writer 
greatly prefers to meet present human interests, and is very glad to believe 
the people of Oregon are of the same mind in very large majority. They 
are proving this by the very great increase in the lumber cut since Mr. 
Hammond wrote down his estimates and his fears. 

The enterprise of the managers of the Oregonian has given us the lum- 
ber cut of 1897. Believing they will be interesting reading to ideal foresters 
and friends of forestry for its uses to humanity, I insert two papers relative 
to the subject from the Daily Oregonian of January 1, 1898: 

LUMBER CUT. 

" The saw mills of Oregon cut 549,823,179 feet of lumber last year. By 
counties the cut was: 

Baker $ 30,000,000 

Benton 1, loO, 000 

Clackamas 4,000,000 

Clatsop 28,000,000 

Columbia 18, 176, 000 

Coos ' 22,000,000 

Crook 1,500,000 

Curry 400,000 

Douglas 35, 000, 000 

Gilliam 1,000,000 

Grant 400,000 

Harney 2,000,000 

Jackson 27,500,000 

Josephine 15,000,000 

Klamath 22, 000, 000 

Lake 900, 000 

Lane 15, 000, 000 

Lincoln 2, 000, 000 

Linn 20,000,000 

Malheur 500,000 

Marion 2,455,000 

Morrow 850,000 

Multnomah 130,000,000 

Polk 7,415,879 

Sherman 

Tillamook 22,000,000 

Umatilla 100,000 

Union 24,500,000 

Wallowa 926,000 

Wasco 2,500,000 

Washington 12,000,000 

Yamhill 600,000 



fl4] ^ 

"The mills of Multnomah county cut 130,000,000 feet, valued at 11,040,- 
000, an average of $8 per thousand. The same average applied to other 
counties, brings the value of the cut in the state to 14,398,585.43. 

"Oregon's timber supply is practically inexhaustible. The great belt, 
comprising the counties of Clatsop, Columbia, Washington and Tillamook, 
contains, as is set forth in another part of this paper, approximately 5(i,- 
000,000,000 feet of standing timber. Last year the lumber cut in the four 
counties just named was about 80,176,000 feet. At that rate it will take 
nearly 700 years to exhaust the standing timber in the belt. 

"Multnomah county cuts more lumber than any other county on the 
Pacific coast. Portland cuts more lumber than any other city on the Pa- 
cific coast. She leads the Pacific northwest in lumber as she leads it in 
every other commodity. As Portland is situated close to the world's great- 
est timber belt, there is no likelihood that she ever will lose her position as 
the greatest lumber-manufacturing city on the Pacific coast. Develop- 
ment of the great belt, which must take place within the next ten years, 
will make Portland the greatest lumber-manufacturing city in the world." 

THE world's greatest TIMBER BELT. 

[ Oregonian, January 1, 1898.] 

The greatest timber belt in the world is in the counties of Clatsop, 
Washington, Columbia and Tillamook, in Northwestern Oregon. In the 
four counties there are 1,884,960 acres, containing 56,149,200,000 feet of tim- 
ber. The standing timber is worth on the average 50 cents per 1000 feet, 
board measure, or $28,074,600. Manufactured into rough lumber, it is worth, 
at the rate of $7 per 1000, the enormous sum of $393,017,400. 

Clatsop county has about 530,000 acres of timber land, averaging 35,- 
000 feet per acre, making a total of 18,550,000,000 feet. 

Tillamook countj' has about 700,000 acres, which will average 35,000 feet 
to the acre, making a totoal of 24,500,000,000 feet. 

Washington county has about 264,960 acres, which will average 20,000 
feet to the acre, making a total of 5,299,900,000 feet. 

Columbia county has about 390,000 acres, which will average 20,000 feet 
to the acre, making a total of 7,800,000,000 feet. 

The foregoing totals of 1,884,960 acres of timber land and 56,149,200,000 
feet of standing timber are conservative. The majority of people who fig- 
ure on Oregon's available timber supply base their calculations on an 
average of 40,000 feet per acre. The average value of 50 cents per 1,000 feet 
for standing timber is reasonable. Present prices of stumpage in the Ore- 
gon timber belt is from 50 cents to $1 per 1,000. Government forestry ex- 
perts have placed the average for Oregon at 62 cents per 1,000 feet. 

The principal rivers in the timber belt are the Nehalem, the Wilson, 
and the Trask. Along the Nehalem are 570,300 acres, averaging 40,000 feet, 
making a total of 22,812,000,000 feet. Along the Wilson are 111,640 acres 



[15] 

averaging 35,000 feet, making a total of 3,907,400,000 feet. Along the Trask 
are 102,400 acres, averaging 40,000 feet, making a total of 3,584,000,000 feet. 

The timber in the belt consists of fir, ceda, hemlock, spruce and larch. 
The fir is the genuine yellow or Douglas fir. It constitutes 8 per cent, of 
the entire growth. Timber in the belt is less subject to fire than timber in 
any section in Oregon. This is because the lauds slope toward the ocean, 
and the heavy fogs which prevail in the sunamer keep the leaves and under- 
brush so damp that fires cannot take hold. 

Michigan and Wisconsin lumbermen of large capital own immense 
bodies of timber land in the belt. 

This showing of forest wealth in the five counties in the north-west 
corner of the state of Oregon will be agreeable reading for her citizens, and 
a study of the question of natural supply of the entire state will lead to en- 
dorsement of the words of the Oregonian that it is " practically inexhaust- 
ible " if our fellow citizens of the American Forestry Association can be 
persuaded to refrain from such methods of procuring legislation affecting 
their fellow citizens on this side of the continent — the conditions of whom 
they cannot understand sufficiently to justify their meddling, by open ac- 
tion or secret intrigue, obstructive of the most economical mode of harvest- 
ing this great source of natural wealth. Information derived from the 
assessor of Clatsop county enables me to confirm the statement of the Ore- 
gonian, that " Michigan and Wisconsin lumber firms of large capital own 
immense bodies of timber in this belt. But these companies are not oper- 
ating the large and costly harvesting agencies in their own timber. Why? 
Because the vV ilson bill gave the lumber market of the world to Canada, 
and the wool market of the world to Australia, and these men of Michigan 
and Wisconsin were compelled either to let their machinery rust in idle- 
ness or set it up near the line of the Canadian railway, and it has been em- 
ployed there during the past four years, while the waste of decay has been 
going on in the woods of Oregon. On the other hand, the development of 
Oregon's portion of the great inland empire has been obstructed by the 
policy alluded to and the insidious methods of the American Forestry Asso- 
ciation, as I have shown. 

The Oregonian's tables show the lumber cut of the five northwestern 
counties of the state to be 210,176,000 feet; that of the five grazing counties 
of Crook, Grant, Harney, Lake, and Malheur, 5,200,000 feet. The nation 
has given about 2,400,000 acres of the public lands to induce the construc- 
tion of so-called military roads into these counties. Thirty-seven years ago 
families of the pioneer class of citizens (whose early settlement of Oregon 
and Washington gave the nation its most important title of occupancy to 
half of the then Oregon territory) began to settle within the boundary of 
these five counties, making investments in full faith that the liberal policy 



[16} 

which had caused the construction of these roads would be continued, and 
the country be developed. There they have lived. Their families have in- 
creased, but many of the younger generation, on coming to maturity, have 
left the isolation of the pastoral life behind them, and have left many re- 
maining who would follow their example if they could find purchasers for 
their properties. They have endured the hardships that attend the occupa- 
tion of raising cattle, horses, and sheep in that region, and the dangers in- 
separable from the contiguity of the native race. There is no longer 
necessity for the military roads by which to give succor there against In- 
dian uprisings. The projected Oregon Central and Eastern Railway (the 
construction of which began on a financial basis furnished by two military 
road grants) is impeded by the (^^ascade forest reserve. This road, if com- 
pleted to the east line of the state, would answer more than all the purposes 
of the military roads for national uses; as troops hereafter will be collected 
in these range states of the interior and brought to the Pacific shores, where 
the emergencies demanding military power are most likely to arise. Mean- 
while the most important aid to an increase of homes in the central part 
of the state of Oregon, and eastward and southward of that region, is a 
railroad through that country, so that lumber for homes and fencing ma- 
terial, and for irrigation projects, can be distributed with greatest economy. 
In the valley and pass by which this line of railroad is now more than half 
way across the Cascade range there are more than one hundred resident 
homesteaders who were located within the limits of the forest reserve be- 
fore it was proclaimed. Many of them were stopped in their efforts for im- 
provement and development of their homes by the prospect of an unendur- 
able Jsoltaion, the proclamation in effect destro^'ing all hope of the social 
surroundings which are the best influences of civilization. To open that 
reservation, two townships wide, to free acquirement of the land, under 
any reasonable conditions as to harvesting of the timber, would be the best 
possible encouragement to those interested in this railroad enterprise which 
this forest policy has so far stopped. It would encourage the completion of 
the road, the manufacture of lumber through a fine timber belt eighty miles 
wide, and give healthful home-supporting opportunity to at least five thou- 
sand heads of families; furnish lumber freights, both eastward and west- 
ward, to the railroad line, and develop the numerous interests in connection 
with this comparatively small opening, for which many people have been 
waiting for more than twenty-five years. 

If the writer were desirous of suggesting the very best means within 
his knowledge of lessening the dangers of the most extensive and destruc- 
tive fires possible in the Cascade timber belt, this is the recommendation 
we would make: Clear a gap across the range in the quickest and most ju- 
dicious way possible. The committee on forestry recorded one undoubted 
truth: "No human agency can stop a western (Oregon) forest fire after it 



[17] 

has once obtained real headway, until it encounters a natural barrier, is ex- 
tinguished by rain, or expires for lack of material." The opening of this 
gap is suggested as means of creating an artificial break in the consumable 
material, and an interested resident population of guards, luhich can be 
made subjects of legal call for aid as one condition of conveyance offoi'est 
lands from the nation or the state. 

Another reason for the foregoing suggestion is the value of the water 
power now running unused. For fifty-one miles the North Sautiam river, 
running down this valley, has an average and very uniform fall of fifty- 
one and one-half feet per mile. It is questionable whether there is another 
stream in the state which could be so often and so cheaply used in the pro- 
duction of force. The very refuse of its forest wealth could be ground into 
paper pulp by water-driven machinery. The writer is no machinist, and 
knows little of what can now be done with electric force, but sincerely be- 
lieves that in this valley there are great opportunities for its cheap naanu- 
facture and a convenient field for its use in harvesting the timber growth 
which ought to be here saved from further waste, and as a guard against 
possible destructive forest fires. There is also, near the head of this valley, 
a very inviting field for fruit growing, dairy farming and apiaries. Twenty 
years ago it was estimated there was room for the settlement of 2,000 fami- 
lies on open or partially open lands, upon which seedling timber has since 
much encroached. 

In view of this great waste going on in the forests of Oregon generally; 
in view of the situations described as' to forest and arid lands near the cen- 
ter of the State, is there any reason for the people of other states to interfere 
with the people of Oregon harvesting their timber wealth in their own way, 
under such circumstances? Ah ! but these Eastern friends say : "We look 
to the future and the oneness of our country." The Western citizens will 
say: "Yes, but the oneness will be best maintained by each expending his 
public spirit where he knows the conditions." Let the citizens of New 
York continue to enlarge the state's holdings on the Adirondacks. Let 
those in Massachusetts use the abandoned farms in that state for public tim- 
ber lots. Let those of New Hampshire follow the example of Mr. Austin 
Corbin, who has shown to the world a field of interesting study by collect- 
ing 1,000 elk, 150 moose, 1,200 deer, and 85 buffalo, and an indefinite num- 
ber of wild swine, all in a forest park of 26,000 acres, to form which he 
canceled 375 titles, by purchase at from $1 to |25 per acre, from people who, 
we may suppose, find life more pleasant in manufactures or trade of town 
or city, or in the pulse-stirring home-building of the West, to which they 
are always welcome. In every state there are openings for the public 
spirited idealist, or if he does not wish to share his plans with others, there 
is the fine example of the founder of Biltmore — an investment in 100,000 
acres of southern pine forests, to be managed for its forestry products. There 
are openings for others in like enterprises in the New England states. 



[18] 

EFFECTS OF FOREST GROWTH ON WATER SUPPLY. 

It is not possible for men and women who never saw the effect of irri- 
gation to estimate its value under such conditions as Mr. Dosch describes 
in the canyons of Snake river, and Dr. Feruow bears witness to having 
seen on the Deserts of Arizona (during his examinations of the forests of 
that territory, recently published by the American Forestry Association.) 

Dr. Fernow notes that "The broad valley of the Rio Verde, which 
carries the drainage from the plateau of Salt river, is capable of agricultural 
development to a much greater extent than has been attempted, but, as in 
other parts of the territory, this requires systematic storage and utilization 
of water. By careful management, the cattle, sheep and goat industry 
would, no doubt, be able to use advantageously the large non-irrigable 
areas." This suggestion can be truthfully applied to the whole arid land 
country from the Mexican line to "British America, and frona the summit of 
the Cascade range in Oregon, to Western Kansas and Nebraska. 

The present flocks and herds, said to number 24,000,000 of sheep and 
1,200,000 cattle, in the arid land area could be greatly augmented, and an 
amount of additional value gathered from what is now desert that can hard- 
ly be conceived of. It is greatly to be hoped that the departments of 
Government will take measures to aid its present development, instead of 
creating and guarding solitudes. It is more than twelve years now, since 
the writer suggested the use of means to get artisian water onto these arid 
lands. 

On similar areas the governments of Australia are in advance of ours, 
both in the reservation of forests and provisions for and conservation of 
water supply. In New South Wales alone, the number of reserves aggre- 
gates 15,050, distributed over every county and almost every parish in the 
province, in order to meet the needs of the people, ranging from 15 acres 
to 74,000 acres in area. Some of them are along the banks of rivers, ex- 
tending two chains from the bank, apparently as protection from the flood 
wood and debris carried by the streams when in extraordinary flood, as 
sonaetimes occurs there as in some portions of arid America. They are un- 
der a local board of control, which tends to cultivate a public spirit — though 
sometimes so numerous as to create confusion. The report mentions thirty 
miles on one river as being in charge of no less than fourteen boards. 
There is no hint in the consular reports of the practical Australians creating 
permanent reserves of millions of acres of timber as protection to the flow 
of streams. The whole system seems to be managed for immediate practi- 
cal development, such as is greatly needed throughout our arid land dis- 
tricts, in which there are now settlers who have to use sagebrush for fuel. 
From the report of Consul Cameron, of Sydney, New South Wales, the 
following is taken: "It is worthy of note, the influence of trees is com- 
paratively 'nil' in this country. During the exceptionally wet year of 



f i9 j 

1887, on i)inby station, north of Baradine, 408 miles north of Sydney, situ- 
ated in a densely timbered country, the mean rainfall was 32-66 inches 
against 38-92 at the neighboring station in the open. On the other hand, 
in the very dry year of 1888, Dinby figured for 11 73 inches with 15-52 
inches at the above stations. Elevation, however, seems to have a benefi- 
cial influence on rainfall, as the average of fourteen years at WoUongong, 
half a mile from the sea, at a height of sixty-seven feet is 3884 inches, and 
at Cordeaux, near the same place, six miles from the sea, it is 55-53 inches 
for seventeen years, at an elevation of about 1,200 feet." The foregoing 
extract is given for what it may be worth as indicating whether it is the 
presence of the timber which influences precipitation, or elevation, merely, 
which has a favorable effect in increasing rainfall. There are other poiut.s 
in Consul Cameron's excellent reiiort that I shall call attention to, 
namely, the amount of moisture taken up by evaporation by different soils 
and situations, but more particularly the difference between sod-covered 
soil and bare earth and water surface. The test was made by Mr. H. C. 
Russell, B. A. C. M. G. F. R. S., the government astronomer for New 
South Wales. The tests were secured by the use of pans eight inches deep, 
and surfaces of four square feet and the records made when practicable 
through the twelve months of the wettest season recorded, which showed 
a mean temperature of 63-1°, the total rainfall was 81-418 inches in one 
hundred and eighty four days of the year, on many of which evaporation 
did not take place, the water running over the test pans. The total evap- 
oration from the square in grasses was 35-960 inches; from the water surface 
31-027 inches; from the garden soil, which, though sandy, hardened when 
dry, it was 25-476 inches, showing, by a difference of nearly ten and a half 
inches, that either the inherent heat of the live grass, the increase of ex- 
posed surface by the grass blades, or the sponge-like absorbtion of the bare 
earth, made this difference. It is probable all three agencies were operative , 
but there is a difference between the grass and the wat^r surfaces. The 
grass giving off 4933 inchess more than the water. This indicates an eflfect 
of absorbtion of heat by the broken surface and color of the grass, and per- 
haps a reflection of heat from the surface of the water, an effect I claim as 
one reason why a solid snowbank will lie longer in the open air unmelted 
than in thick timber or brush near by, an eflfect that every one familiar 
with the mountains can often see. Other influences are present, namely it 
is warmer in dense timber in the winter season than in the open, and while 
it is cooler in the timber during the dayhght in summer when the sun is 
shinning; it is warmer within a timber belt on a summer night than iu the 
open. This is proven by the fact that cold given off from the bodies of 
snow during the night in the summer months often causes water to freeze 
in the open, when it does not do so in the nearby timber. There is an- 
other and very important fact indicated by the difierence of ten and a halt 



[ 20 1 

inches of water evaporation between the grass covered and the bare soil, 
during the days of one year on which evaporation tooli place. If the great- 
evaporation was caused by the life and color of the grass and the increased 
surface its blades offered to the sun's rays we may reasonably expect the 
greatly increased surface of a growing forest will throw off a greater 
amount of moisture by evaporation than will a grass surface. The ques- 
tion whether this is so or not is most respectfully referred to the eminent 
body of scientists to which the forestry committee belongs, and to the na- 
tional experiment stations generally. The writer believes science will find 
that trees not only extract water from a greater depth of earth than does 
grass, but also give off during the growing season much more. The evap- 
oration, we see by this table, was nearly thirty-six inches of 81-418 that 
fell. Could experiment be brought to the solution of the question, the pre- 
diction is ventured that it will prove that trees not only draw much more 
water from the soil than grass but that, drawing it from a greater depth of 
cooler earth, they scatter a greater coolness from their leaves, and thus pro- 
duce the grateful shade and pine-scented breath of the forests we all de- 
light in. 

Leaving this subject for the present, I quote again from the consul's re- 
port immediately following the tables I have summarized. He says: " In 
addition to my previous remarks descriptive of the soil characteristics, it 
should be borne in mind that every fleece of wool that is produced takes a 
percentage of potash and other fertile matter out of the soil, and that 
hitherto nothing has been done to replace these elements. As a conse- 
quence, valuable herbage gradually gives out and is replaced by an inferior 
output. For instance, pine scrub has seized on thousands of acres in the in- 
terior of what was formerly/ magniflceut 23astoral land.^' The italics are 
mine. I don't believe Mr. Cameron has got the true cause, though it may 
be so in some thin soils in Australia. Pine scrub and that of yellow fir 
(Douglas spruce) .takes the land in eastern and western Oregon where a 
fleece of wool or a pound of flesh never was extracted from the soil by do- 
mestic animals. 

The consular report from which I have just quoted contains much that 
may be useful to the industries of eastern Oregon, which is the western 
edge of vast natural pasture lands of the range states, and of which Oregon 
yet has nearly thirty millions of acres east of the Cascade range, which, as 
yet, are neither reserved nor sold. For the certain development of these 
lands to the highest possible use, both timber and water conservation are 
necessary under conditions which seem so nearly similar to those in New 
South Wales as to make the examples they set us in their methods of great 
value, as guides towards improving our own present methods. The report 
shows that the natural condition of each district has been closely studied 
as to the kind of stock it will best support. Heavy or light horses, heavy 



[21] 

or light cattle, cattle for the dairy, or cattle-breeding for beef— the districts 
better adapted to sheep than any of the larger stock, — these eminently prac- 
tical people have consulted the genius of each locality and devoted the land 
to the purpose for which nature best fits it. It also shows that not only 
private enterprise, but public money is actively at work developing the best 
means of getting water onto the arid areas of that land, once thought im- 
possible of use to civilization, as was the Great American desert of fifty 
years ago. In doing this the example set by private enterprise in California 
in sinking artesian wells, is not only encouraged by public recognition, but 
the government engages in the same business when private capital and en- 
terprise are insufficient, doing such work as was suggested by the writer in 
a letter to Governor Moody and by him forwarded to Senator J. N. Dolph, 
and by him submitted to the appropriate committee of the United States 
senate. The committee included in an appropriation bill a liberal item to 
test the artesian well system in Colorado and in Oregon, which was de- 
feated, I think by nonconcurrence of the house of congress. 

The need of water on the vast body of the public domain yet in the 
arid land states requires that means should be taken to approximately 
measure the amount of water which does not flow of by the river system, 
nor is yet accounted for by the ascertained evaporation. In this, common 
observation teaches that people of eastern Oregon are very greatly inter- 
ested, because, on account of the character of the surface formation, the 
precipitation falling east of the summit ridge of the Cascade range seems 
in larger measure to pass into the ground where it falls — and not on that 
range and interior mountains merely, but over the great plain of the Co- 
lumbia basin. The disappearance of snow from the surface, under the in- 
fluence of the (Chinook), wind from the Pacific ocean, leaving the ground 
dry in a few minutes,' seems to the observer magical — turning in a few 
hours of time the extensive arid lands of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and 
western Montana from a snow covered condition distressful for the stock 
owner to contemplate, into immediately usable pasture lands, yet showing 
little effect on the great river of the west — the Columbia — the floods of 
which occur usually in June. 

Where does this precipitation lodge; and is it recoverable for uses in 
agriculture and horticulture? are questions of more pressing importance to 
the people of Oregon at present than the opening of the unnecessarily large 
Cascade forest reserve, on the eastern portion of which, pasturage being 
permitted, the livestock interest can have the benefit until a permanent 
forest policy (should one be needed) can be adopted, which will minister to 
the general welfare. I have endeavored to show that the privilege of graz- 
ing the east side of the Cascode range and foothills is of the annual value 
of $1,000,000. The entire value of the sheep and wool interest of the state 
is shown in the Oregonian of January 1, 1898, to be as follows: — 



[22]^ 

Sheep, 2,167,241 head @ S2.25 8 4,876,292 25 

Wool, 15,706,356 pounds, @ 10 cents 1,570,635 60 

Total for sheep and wool S 6,446,927 85 

Nearly, or quite, four fifths of the value is in the 1,867,542 sheep kept in 
the fourteen counties of Eastern Oregon, where, as I have said, precipita- 
tion sinks below the surface in a manner our eastern friends, who pass reso- 
lutions to keep the use of our forest lands from us, cannot possibly under- 
stand. Could these gentlemen become imbued with the knowledge Dr. 
Fernow gained by his visit to Arizona last fall, and preceive as he did the 
wonderful effects of water on the arid lands, which by the use of irrigation 
water will become fields of production — gardens like that of Eden — in 
which to grow "every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food," 
they would cease to injure us. To realize Mr. Fernow's conception there is 
much more necessity for the expenditure of public money, to indicate to 
the people how to secure the water precipitated during the year, for use in 
the growing season, than there is for a forestry policy, albeit the experiment 
station of Utah, by acting on Dr. Fernow's proposition for setting apart cer- 
tain lands for testing the timber trees, suggested by him in order to find 
what is best, is taking hold of the forestry question in a practical manner. 
The experiment station's efforts to find how much irrigation water is re- 
quired for the production of a given crop is very commendable, as teaching 
how to make the desert blossom with the rose, in the very midst of the vast 
area, we now begin to see of value that cannot yet be estimated; but which 
I believe will be increased, not diminished, by the use of sheep in pasturing 
all the timbered highlands interior to the Cascade range, as well as on its 
eastern slopes. 

To close this paper, I will summarize the position I believe the closest 
possible scientific tests will demonstrate as true. 

First. — Neither in the valleys nor on the mountains of Oregon are either 
sheep or cattle an injury to the growth of coniferous trees. 

Second. — While the density of the forest growth which Oregon people 
deem commercial timber makes sheep keeping in it impossible, the grazing 
of the summit ridges and eastern slopes is beneficial and pi'otective. 

Third. — Snow melts first on those mountains within the timber, or on 
brush lands, to which I add, both timber and brush lands consume more 
water than they give out (none of which is given out in any other way 
than from the leaves). Trees lift the moisture from the earth while grow- 
ing : the common observation of all who have worked in maple-sugar camps 
teaches that there is a principle of life in a tree that causes the sap to run 
when the grass plants are under snow. Still, snow lying from winter till 
after the middle of July is incompatible with the growth of timber of value. 
The surface sources of streams are from snow in the open after that date. 
To this I will add that no plant known to me dispenses water from its roots 
— all are drinkers; and when the question becomes so important »a it is now 



[23] 



becoming — how to makes homes of abundance on the yet unpurchased arid 
lands, it is better to find out, if it be findable by science, whether we have 
not all been following " a general concensus of opinion " which science will 
not sustain, by believing that shade will increase the flow of a mountain 
stream as we were taught by the charming Ayrshire plowman, when he 
made the stream say : — 

"Last day I grat wi' spite and teen 
When Poet Burns cam by 
That to a bard I should be seen 
With half my channel dry." 

The conception of the poet was that the trees by their shade would 
prevent evaporation of more moisture than their roots would take up. The 
forestry committee reasons on that basis, but my observation compels me to 
conclude that the Shepherd King of Israel was truer to nature than Burns, 
and will be found truer to science when he said of a good man : " He shall 
be like a tree planted by rivers of water that bringeth forth his fruit in his 
season ; his leaf also shall not wither '' * * * — Psalms 1:3. 

APPENDIX. 

In order to bring before the mind of interested readers the ratio of 
evaporation, table No. IV of bulleton 50 of the Utah experiment station is 
inserted as showing the results obtained by two European scientists: 

TABLE NO. IV. 



Made hy Hellriegel, 



Made hy Wollny. 




Horse beans . 
Peas 

Barley 

Clover 

Spring wheat 
Buckwheat-- 

Lupine 

Spring rye — 
Oats 



262 
292 
310 
330 
359 
371 
373 
377 
402 



Maize 

Millet 

Peas 

Sunflower - 
Buckwheat 

Oats 

Barley 

Mustard — 
Rape 



233 

416 
447 
490 
646 
665 
774 
843 
912 



According to Hellriegel, 330 tons of water would be absorbed by the 
roots of clover, drawn up through the stems and evaporated from the 
breathing pores of the leavf^s for each ton of clover harvested. If the yield 
be estimated at three tons per acre, the quantity of water per acre is 990 
tons, or a volume sufficient to cover the surface to a depth of xi feet, or 
nearly nine inches. 

Hellreigel's results as to clover tends to explain why alfalfa, one of the 
strongest growing of the clover family, is "always dry," not unusually receiv- 
ing sufficient over the surface during the growing season in Utah to cover 



[24]» 

the ground six feet. Should alfalfa be found to drink water by the roots in 
the same proportion as above claimed for clover the seven tons per year 
given as the yield in the Snake River Canyon leads to the astonishing re- 
sult of 2,310 tons of water per acre annually consumed, or about 27 inches, 
which is yet so far short of the six feet mentioned by Mr. Samuel Fortier, 
compiler of Bulletin 50, on the "water supply of Cache valley, Utah." 

The difference suggests such an immense waste of water where that 
may be so truly called " the water of life," as to call for a wide range of ex- 
periment, both as to the requirement of plants and economical methods of 
furnishing what is necessary. 

In connection with Mr. Dosch's brief description of orchards and farms 
of Snake river canyon, the cultivator ought to know as near as possible 
how much water he needs for each acre of apples, pears, peaches, prunes or 
other fruit crop ; how much for his several field crops. These questions 
will not only arise in limited localities, as between those who are drawing 
from the same ditch, but will arise between districts as to what propor- 
tion of a river, like the Snake river, shall be drawn out on the north side, at 
the American falls for instance, and what amount will be required or can 
be used on the south side. So, in such a situation as the Deschutes near 
Farewell bend, the whole flow of the river might be taken on to the desert, 
but on the west side the Tamilowa and Benton, or Squaw creek, can be 
used over much of that area, while the whole of the stream could be taken 
out on the east side and carried across Crooked river to fertilize a fine body 
of dry plain on the north side of that stream. 

There certainly seems a wide field for intelligent enterprise. 

JOHN MINTO, 

Seeretarv State Board of Horticulture. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



001 455 903 6 i 



